Math manipulatives in 3rd gradeBy tweet

Just worked on mine today!! I store most of my manipulatives in clear plastic shoe boxes with snap on lids. Actually, I guess they are more translucent than clear. They are the thicker, soft plastic rather than the clear, hard, brittle plastic. But I can see into them. I put peel-n-stick labels on the ends to identify contents, more for the kids than for me. I have all of my boxes (which stack well) in an old cubby shelf. I have them low and accessible to the kids. If Johnny really needs a clock to help him do his independent work, he may go get one from the box marked clock faces. Some of my manipulatives required more than one box to hold it all, but that's okay with the labels. I just stack like boxes. My base ten blocks are too bulky, so I keep them in the container they came in, which just happens to be clear! I use little, cute erasers for counters. Depending on the size of the eraser, I can fit 40-50 in a clear plastic Gerber baby food container. Then I place those containers in the shoe boxes. When we need counters, my leader just gets the shoe box and passes a container to each person.

I also have some of my math card games stored in see-thru colored crayon boxes. A little harder to see through, though.